- Hong Kong: Beijing puppet regime police harass artist for trying to commemorate Tiananmen atrocities
Source: Associated Press
“A performance artist in Hong Kong tried on Wednesday to honor the victims of Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown but was quickly stopped by police, the latest sign of the city’s shrinking freedom of expression. Sanmu Chen tried to tie a symbolic red thread to a street signpost in Causeway Bay, a busy shopping district close to a park that for decades hosted an annual candlelight vigil on June 4 to commemorate those who died in the crackdown that ended student-led protests in Beijing in 1989. Police officers stopped Chen and searched his bag before letting him go. Hong Kong was for decades the only place in China where a large-scale public commemoration of the crackdown was held. The massive annual vigils were banned in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and public acts to mark the Tiananmen Square killings have become increasingly sensitive in the city in recent years.” (06/04/26)
- TX: Flesh-eating screwworm found, sparking fears for US cattle
Source: Washington Post
“A case of New World screwworm has been found in Texas six decades after the flesh-eating pest was largely eradicated in the United States, sparking an aggressive response amid fears about its potential impact on the livestock industry. The U.S. Agriculture Department confirmed the parasite was detected in the umbilical area of a 3-week-old calf in Zavala County. There have been no further cases detected, and efforts are underway to contain and eradicate it, the agency said in a statement Wednesday. New World screwworm is a parasitic fly that affects livestock, pets and wildlife, as well as people in rare cases. It lays eggs in open wounds or orifices, with the hatched maggots burrowing into and feeding on flesh. It’s typically found in South America and parts of the Caribbean but has moved north through Central America and Mexico since 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” (06/04/26)
- Guide missing for a week on Mount Everest found crawling to base camp: “Nothing short of a miracle”
Source: CBS News
“A Sherpa guide who went missing last week while descending Mount Everest with a client has been found alive, according to the crew that led the search for him. His survival amid treacherous conditions on the world’s tallest peak has been hailed as ‘a miracle’ by the mountaineering community in Nepal. Dawa Sherpa, 52, was located while crawling down to base camp and has since been reunited with his family, who said they had given up hope for his return. … Dawa was located by a cleaning crew Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above base camp, said Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which coordinated the search. He was quickly carried down to safety and given food and water. A rescue helicopter flew him to HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu, where his wife and daughter, who already had begun funeral rituals for him, were waiting.” (06/04/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/guide-missing-week-mount-everest-found-alive-base-camp/
- US weekly jobless claims increase to four-month high; worker productivity revised down
Source: Reuters
“The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased more than expected last week, touching their highest level in four months, but the underlying trend remained consistent with a stable labor market. Economists shrugged off the rise in weekly jobless claims reported by the Labor Department on Thursday as volatility related to last Monday’s Memorial Day holiday. Claims tend to rise around public holidays. They said there were no signs yet the Middle East conflict was having a noticeable impact on the labor market, though uncertainty was growing.” (06/04/26)
- NASA’s Mars MAVEN probe is dead
Source: Engadget
“NASA has officially ended the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, six months after it lost contact with the probe. MAVEN was the agency’s first program dedicated to studying the Martian atmosphere and its evolution. It launched in 2013 from Cape Canaveral and entered the Martian orbit nearly a year later in 2014. The probe’s primary science mission was scheduled to last one year, but it ended up spending more than 11 years in orbit, sending back data from Mars. NASA even used it as an antenna for the Mars 2020 mission, which brought the Perserance rover to the planet. The last time the agency heard from MAVEN was on December 6, 2025, before it suddenly lost signal after passing behind Mars.” (06/04/26)
https://www.engadget.com/2187315/nasa-ends-maven-mars-mission/
- Trump whines over “unpatriotic” vote to shut down his illegal Iran war
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“US President Donald Trump has hit back at lawmakers who voted to send him a rebuke over the war in Iran, labelling the group ‘unpatriotic.’ On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a measure that seeks to halt Trump from taking further military action. In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote: ‘Yesterday, in a meaningless vote, the House voted, 4 bad Republicans and all of the Dumocrats, to limit my War Powers, right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the War with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Who would do such an unpatriotic thing.'” (06/04/26)
- Blackstone restricts flagship fund withdrawals as private asset fears reemerge
Source: CNBC
“Blackstone is restricting withdrawals from its flagship Blackstone Private Credit (BCRED) fund following a spike in investor redemption requests. The asset management giant capped investor withdrawals from the $79 billion non-traded business development company at 5% of shares, after redemption requests hit 10%, or about $4.5 billion, during the second quarter.” (06/04/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/04/blackstone-caps-withdrawals-private-credit.html
- Feds: Airport suspect packed explosive device for flight, caught with cryptic message on phone
Source: Fox News
“A California man is facing federal charges after authorities say he attempted to pass through security at Sacramento International Airport with an explosive device in his carry-on luggage while preparing to board a flight to North Carolina. Kimani Osayande Jones, also known as Kimani Osayande Jackson, 49, of Sacramento, was charged by criminal complaint with unlawfully possessing explosive material in an airport …. Authorities allege that a search of his carry-on backpack revealed an M-type explosive device, a torch lighter capable of igniting it, a knife, scissors, a scissor blade, an aerosol can and zip ties. … Federal prosecutors said Jones was also carrying five cellphones. According to the complaint, all five phones had tape covering their front-facing cameras. One phone allegedly had a 15-minute timer ready to start, while another displayed a message from an unidentified number stating, ‘we will be awaiting your call.'” (06/04/26)
- Israel: Smotrich announces plan for 2,162 squats in occupied West Bank
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has announced a major expansion of illegal [squats] in the occupied West Bank, as he pushes to annex more of the Palestinian territory. Smotrich said on Wednesday that a planning committee had approved the construction of 2,162 new Jewish homes, of which 1,006 units will be in a new illegal [squat] near Jerusalem, 922 near the city of Nablus and 234 near Hebron.” (06/04/26)
- CA: Bay Area woman accused of setting fire to nation’s oldest Buddhist monastery
Source: SFGate
“Police have arrested a 36-year-old Mountain View woman in connection with a fire at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in Carmel Valley earlier this year. Announced Tuesday by the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, the arrest comes after an investigation that revealed GuoGuo Lu was allegedly making online statements tied to the fire and threats toward other Buddhist temples in the state. The fire happened on March 27 at the oldest Japanese Buddhist Soto Zen monastery in the country, officials said. The sheriff’s office said Lu is facing several charges, including arson, making criminal threats and committing a felony hate crime.” (06/03/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/centralcoast/article/monastery-fire-arrest-carmel-22290279.php
- “Tank bottom”: Oil industry warning Trump administration that drained inventories threaten to spike gasoline prices
Source: Politico
“The oil industry is warning the Trump administration that a Hormuz-sized hole in the world’s petroleum market is steadily draining inventories to levels that are likely to send global energy prices surging in the next several weeks, according to four executives. Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said. The warnings came as recently as late last month as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources began showing that fuel makers were increasingly relying on oil and fuel from their storage tanks to replace products no longer arriving from the Middle East.” (06/04/260
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/04/oil-price-spike-white-house-hormuz-00949435
- America’s Exit Tax Is an Unconstitutional Violation of Human Rights, Part 1
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Wendy McElroy“The U.S. border and the requirements for U.S. citizenship or residency are defining issues of this decade. But almost all the attention they receive focuses on one side of the coin: namely, how to control immigration and who is entitled to citizenship or residency. The other side: how easily can Americans emigrate and renounce their citizenship? Expatriation is rare in comparison to the deluge of immigration in recent years, but the ease with which a citizen can become an expatriate is a litmus test of a government’s authoritarianism. How tight a grip does America claim to have over an individual and his wealth because of a geographical accident of birth? Exit taxes provide an answer.” (06/04/26)
- Can’t Anyone Here Not Play This Political Game?
Source: Garrison Center
by Joel Schlosberg“It may be 64 years after the New York Mets losing 120 baseball matches in their debut season led manager Casey Stengel to plead ‘Can’t anyone here play this game?’ Yet The Wall Street Journal columnist William A. Galston notes that the same question could still apply to another ‘two monumentally inept teams.’ … Galston has in mind the Democrats and Republicans, ‘Capitol Hill’s Unlovable Losers’ (May 27). Less than two full years after the 2024 presidential election, Galston has merely to nod at the former party’s abject failure to learn from their loss, and the latter’s squandering of what little momentum remains from their win.” (06/04/26)
- The Covenant
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders“Some argue that to sacralize others is not a legal contrivance, but an ontological discovery. Rights are real, some insist. Rights are a derivation, others argue. We need not settle that debate. Every tradition that has ever produced wisdom — whether Mosaic, Stoic, Vedic, or Taoist — arrives at the same conclusion: To trespass upon others without cause is not merely a crime, it is a desecration. … The very foundation of law, in every civilization that has not entirely lost its way, is an elaboration on this. One may not injure the innocent. One may not seize what is not his. One may not constrain a person without justification sufficient to meet the scrutiny of a free people who seek similar protections.” (06/04/26)
- AI Won’t Stave Off the Debt Disaster
Source: Law & LIberty
by Mitch Daniels“The evidence is persuasive that AI and related advances are already boosting the economy in the most important way possible, by raising productivity. That’s the biggest reason that GDP is surprising on the upside while job growth remains tepid. Moreover, forecasts that this favorable windage will accelerate seem highly credible. What’s not credible is the idea that even an AI-led productivity surge can suffice to offset our decades of dereliction. The Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve, and other forecasters peg average future economic growth at a little under 2 percent. Assume a 70 percent boost from the AI revolution, to 3 percent or so, and it becomes possible to imagine our [sic] current debt level stabilizing, not improving but merely getting no worse. But even this daydream requires far too many improbable breaks.” [editor’s note: The US government debt isn’t “our” debt, it’s the US government’s debt. There’s a difference – TLK] (06/04/26)
- Nobody’s Perfect
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson“Progressives rallying around the troubled candidacy of Graham Platner, the habitually dishonest skirt-chasing Totenkopf enthusiast challenging that nice Maine lady for a Senate seat, have learned precisely the wrong lessons from Republicans’ experience with Donald Trump, an experience that has left the GOP morally debased and ethically discredited and—perhaps Republicans will actually care about this part—unable to get much of what it wants politically. Legitimate issues, such as immigration control and abortion regulation, have been tainted by association with Trump and Trumpism, which means dishonesty and stupidity in the formulation of policy followed by incompetence and corruption in the execution of policy. Progressives will get the same thing from such a figure as Platner.” (06/04/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/platner-trump-morals-perfect-maine-primary/
- TDS Watch: The “Convicted Felon” Argument
Source: Town Hall
by Larry Elder“‘Trump is a convicted felon!’ Who hasn’t heard this attack line made constantly by critics of President Donald Trump? For them, Trump’s conviction settles the debate about his character and fitness for office. But consider what one prominent legal analyst — not from Fox News, Newsmax or a conservative publication — wrote about the case. The charge against Trump brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg boils down to this. Trump recorded payments connected to the Stormy Daniels matter as legal expenses. Bragg transformed that into 34 felony counts and secured a conviction in a jurisdiction where Trump remains unpopular. Elie Honig, CNN’s senior legal analyst, outlined his objections in New York Magazine. He was brutal.” (06/04/26)
- Boosting reliability: How HVDC “back to backs” improve power sharing between grids
Source: Niskanen Center
by Rachel Levine & Maggie Zhang“High-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology is widely recognized as the preferred solution for long-distance power transmission, but it also plays a critical role in ‘back to back’ connections that transfer power between neighboring grids. Electricity sharing among the nation’s three grid interconnections relies entirely on these back-to-back facilities, but most were built decades ago and have limited transfer capability. Upgrading these HVDC back-to-backs is an opportunity to help meet the nation’s rapidly rising demand for energy.” (06/04/26)
- Move Fast, Surveil Things
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Cooper Quintin“Meta has deployed facial recognition code to millions of their always-on surveillance glasses, according to new reporting by Wired. EFF’s Threat Lab was able to confirm that the facial recognition code is present through static analysis of the application. This dangerous new Meta functionality stores faceprints as a series of 2,048 numbers uniquely representing the positioning of a person’s facial features. When this feature is activated, it will convert every new face in the sightlines of the surveillance glasses into a series of numbers, and compare it to all the existing faceprints in the user’s database. Wired and EFF confirmed that the code is present and active, though not yet exposed to consumers.” (06/04/26)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/move-fast-surveil-things
- Why do students censor themselves?
Source: Expression
by Chapin Lenthall-Cleary“In our College Free Speech Rankings survey, we ask students how often they feel they cannot express their opinions. Around one in six say they self-censor fairly often or very often. What can we say about what causes this? First, self-censorship is more common on the right …. Why are conservatives, and especially conservative women, more likely to self-censor? One reason might be to hide their political beliefs from professors (who skew heavily liberal) in order to get a better grade in class …” (06/04/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/why-do-students-censor-themselves
- Congresswoman Fakes Code Pink “Assault,” And Other Notes
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna falsely reported that antiwar activist Medea Benjamin ‘smacked’ her during a confrontation on Thursday, subsequently calling the police in an effort to get the Code Pink leader charged with assault. If you watch the video of the so-called ‘assault,’ it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. The 73 year-old activist barely grazes the clothing on Luna’s arm with her hand while speaking, after which the US Air Force veteran Luna collapses into a pile of blubbering victimhood. Benjamin reports that she was briefly detained by Capitol Police after the incident, but was released without charges after officers reviewed the video footage.” (06/04/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/06/04/congresswoman-fakes-code-pink-assault-and-other-notes/
- Spy chief pick has the Trump playbook: Attack political enemies
Source: Washington Post
by David Ignatius“Bill Pulte has no intelligence experience. But he has proved he’ll target the president’s foes.” (06/04/26)
- In Britain, A Tragic Murder Was Followed By Mass Confusion
Source: Persuasion
by Cathy Young“Here’s what the case looks like without the hyperbole.” (06/04/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/in-britain-a-tragic-murder-was-followed
- CA Dems dumped Porter, but Maine Dems hold onto Platner for dear life
Source: Fox News
by Hugh Hewitt“Former Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter got smoked in Tuesday’s ‘jungle primary’ for California’s governor’s race, the runoff for which will come in November. Right now, it looks like Steve Hilton vs. Xavier Becerra will face each other in the general election, though that won’t be certain for days — but we do know Porter won’t be in the final. She plummeted from her position as the early front-runner and darling of progressives last year after questions about her temperament surfaced and she never left. When ABC News ran headlines like this last month, readers knew her campaign was finished: ‘Katie Porter fights questions on temperament as the only woman in crowded California gubernatorial race. Experts are mixed over whether she should have raised outbursts that went viral.'” (06/04/26)
- Commerce and Warehouse Clubs
Source: EconLog
by Art Carden“Sol Price did not set out to change retail. He stumbled into it by accident and alertness. He was an active member of his community in San Diego and served as a lawyer for several retailers and wholesalers, including those in jewelry and liquor, who sold to a Los Angeles store called Fedco. He accompanied his clients to Los Angeles to visit a Fedco store. Fedco was a store that sold to government employees at deep discounts. Price observed that many government employees commuted from San Diego to Los Angeles, and he believed a similar store could do well in San Diego. He and his partners presented their proposal to Fedco, which rejected it. Price, however, had a warehouse in San Diego he needed to do something with, and he thought, ‘Why not do in San Diego what Fedco doesn’t want to?'” (06/04/26)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/commerce-and-warehouse-clubs
- Roddie Edmonds and the Power of Saying No
Source: The Daily Economy
by Barry Brownstein“Liberty depends on individuals saying no to power, especially when authority demands moral compromise, as one American officer proved behind barbed wire in World War II.” (06/04/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/roddie-edmonds-and-the-power-of-saying-no/
- It’s Time to Set Global Labor Standards for the Gig Economy
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
by Lena Simet & Anna Bacciarelli“Most discussion of artificial intelligence and work is about the future: which jobs may disappear, which skills may lose value, which workers may be replaced. But for millions of gig workers, who work for online platforms such as Uber, this future is already here. Algorithms set their pay, assign their tasks, monitor their performance, and determine whether they can keep working at all. … This leaves many workers with unstable pay, dangerous conditions, and little recourse when something goes wrong. But this could be about to change. From June 1 to 12 in Geneva, governments will enter a final round of negotiations at the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations agency dedicated to labor rights, over the first binding global standard for what is called platform work.” [editor’s note: The “problem” with gig workers is that they don’t answer to government bureaucrats, and lovers of government bureaucracy hate that – TLK] (06/04/26)
https://fpif.org/ai-runs-the-global-gig-economy-governments-must-respond/
- The 26-Year Assault Is Over
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“Gary, Indiana, initiated its action against a laundry list of gun makers, distributors and dealers in August 1999. The suit accused them of culpability for crimes committed with the weapons they had brought into the marketplace. At the time, making and marketing guns was legal; still is. So the suit was manifestly absurd from the outset. Perhaps cities contemplating litigation against baseball bat makers and steak knife vendors will accept the lesson.” (06/04/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/06/04/gun-rights-survive-26-yr/
- A Free Market Approach to Healthcare: Lower Costs and Better Outcomes
Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker“[T]he big story that fans of free markets everywhere should be focused on is the money we pay for things like drugs and medical equipment. This year we’ll spend close to $750 billion on drugs and other pharmaceutical products. We’ll spend over $50 billion on various therapeutic devices used at home. Hospitals and other providers will spend over $130 billion on medical equipment. … Insofar as drugs or scans are expensive, it is almost certainly due to patent monopolies or related protections.” (06/04/26)
- Expanding the Abraham Accords Would Help Netanyahu, Not America
Source: The American Conservative
by Doug Bandow“[T]he so-called Abraham Accords, long touted as a major achievement from Trump’s first term, are a pious fraud. Though depicted as a kind of peace deal, they have nothing to do with peace, since none of the participants—so far Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates (Sudan signed on but fell into civil war before ratifying the agreement)—have been at war with Israel. Nor has the lack of Israeli embassies across the Persian Gulf and North Africa prevented any nation from engaging in back-channel security cooperation. … expanding the Abraham Accords would act as a Hail Mary political pass to Netanyahu, who faces a difficult reelection campaign. It would both offer a dramatic success to the Israeli prime minister and act as a de facto endorsement by the American president. Indeed, Trump appears to believe his ability to shift votes is as great in Israel as in U.S. primary contests.” (06/04/26)
- Trump’s art of the deal meets Iran’s long memory of foreign exploitation
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Tanya Goudsouzian & Ibrahim Al-Marashi“Washington may view these talks as a standard business transaction, but history has taught Tehran that a compromise with the West is a trap.” (06/04/26)
- A Timely Impeachment Primer
Source: Law & Liberty
by James Wallner“Impeachment has become more common in American politics in recent years. Democrats impeached Donald Trump twice in his first term. The Senate failed to convict him both times. Yet the power remains poorly understood despite its rising prominence in political discourse. Keith E. Whittington’s new book aims to fix that.” (06/04/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/a-timely-impeachment-primer/
- Can California Still Be Saved?
Source: American Greatness
by Victor Davis Hanson“The recent California gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral elections—where, remarkably, Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt both appear to have advanced to the general election in November—offer a glimmer of hope. Could it be that some on the Left, along with a number of Independents, have finally realized that neither wealth nor an upscale ZIP code can protect them from the Left’s vindictive socialist madness? California gas prices, even prior to the Iran war, had reached the highest levels in the continental United States. The cause is self-evident: left-wing policies that forbid most new gas and oil exploration, impose radical green-fuel mandates and levy the highest gas taxes in the U.S. and drive out oil refineries. Illegal immigration has soared. Currently, some 11 million Californians—28 percent of the resident population—were not born in the U.S.” (06/04/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/06/04/can-california-still-be-saved/
- Illegal Tariffs, Round 3
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman“Another failing war Trump won’t end.” (06/04/26)
- Copernicus at 500
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen“Famed for his contributions to the hard sciences—most notably his theory of heliocentricity—the sixteenth-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was also an acute analyst of monetary policy. To that end, Ralph Benko has done us all a great service with this new edition of Copernicus’s classic, if neglected, treatise On the Minting of Money. Indeed, its lessons, though nearly five centuries old, remain evergreen.” (06/04/26)
- Why Stone-Faced Fascists Keep Getting Antiquity Wrong
Source: The Bulwark
by Bret Devereaux“Homer is back in the discourse on account of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, The Odyssey. The latest controversy began with Elon Musk, among others, protesting the supposed inaccuracy of casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen, a fictional character, who among other fantastic elements is the daughter of the god Zeus and was laid as an egg by her human mother. … the fight over Homer represents just another skirmish in the campaign mounted by bigoted very-online right-wing self-described ‘chuds’ to claim Greek and Roman culture for their own fascist, or at least fascist-adjacent, ideology, which demands the exclusion of minorities, women, and LGBTQ people.” (06/04/26)
- Nonzero, 06/04/26
Source: bloggingheads.tv
“Seeing China Clearly | Robert Wright & Tianyu Fang.” (06/04/26)
- NPR Politics Podcast, 06/04/26
Source: National Public Radio [US state media]
“Voters reject the establishment in this week’s primaries.” (06/04/26)
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/04/nx-s1-5846550/voters-reject-the-establishment-in-this-weeks-primaries
- The Chris Hedges Report, 06/04/26
Source: The Chris Hedges Report
“Jeffrey Epstein, the Russian Mob, & the Hidden Assets of the Maxwells (w/ Moe Tkacik).” (06/04/26)
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-the-russian-mob-and
- Open Tab, 06/04/26
Source: Substack
“[Joanna Coles] on the golden age of glossies, managing media decline, the Daily Beast’s next chapter, and what life looks like on the other side.” (06/04/26)
- Mark Edge Show, 06/04/26
Source: Free Talk Live
“Mark sits down with comedian and author Andrew Heaton to discuss his new book, Tribalism is Dumb: Where It Came From, How It Got So Bad, and What to Do About It …” (06/04/26)
- Radio Atlantic, 06/04/26
Source: The Atlantic
“Is the GOP Starting to Defy Trump?” (06/04/26)
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/06/indiana-trump-republicans/687423
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 06/04/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“House Votes To End Iran War – Will Trump Ignore Congress?” (06/04/26)
- Half the Answer, episode 86
Source: Liberal Currents
“The Two American Reconstructions: An Appraisal, Reflection.” (06/04/26)